Mexico City overcomes Covid fear, kicks off major music festival

By Mónica Rubalcava

Mexico City, Nov 20 (EFE).- A major music festivals returned to Mexico City on Saturday after nearly two years as thousands of young people turned up to enjoy the event and feel safe again in a city that had been the epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic in the country.

“We are not afraid,” Emiliano Morales, who has been attending the event since 2017, told EFE. He had traveled from the nearby state of Puebla with his friends to listen to the Missio band at the capital’s Hermanos Rodriguez stadium.

“This is the first time that I have come, it is very exciting. We spent an year being locked up and it has been very difficult, but returning to this hit (event) is incredible,” said Kenia Carmona, who admitted that she had only received one dose of an anti-Covid vaccine, same as Morales.

The festival, strangely called Corona Capital – although the name predates the pandemic – brought back memories of the Vive Latino festival on Mar. 15, 2020, which was attended by over 130,000 people amid a controversy over it being held two weeks after the first Covid case was reported in the country.

Corona Capital is the first major music event since then, and requires a certificate of being fully vaccinated or a negative Covid test for both workers and attendees.

“We pass through a sanitization screening booth where all the workers and participants have to test negative for Covid,” Sheila, a worker at the event who is tasked with disinfecting the public spaces, told EFE.

Tame Impala, Disclosure, LP and All Time Low, were some of the most popular bands to perform on the first ay.

Some of the audience gathered together in a crowd next to the stage to enjoy the artists, while others chose to listen from a distance in small groups.

Similarly, the mask seemed to have became a dispensable accessory, although the majority of the audience complied with the rules.